Wagatail review

While we were away in San Francisco we left our precious fur ball in the hands of Carmen from Wagatail.

We didn't feel comfortable leaving the cat in a boarding house because ultimately it came down to her personality, we knew she would hate being left alone, but even more she would hate being put in a small cage with a bunch of other noisy smelly animals around. She is a young and playful cat and she loves being around people and laying outside in a shadowy spot with fresh air.

We researched our options for pet sitting services in Sydney, and sadly, there weren't many. In fact there were only 2: Carmen from Wagatail and Richard from Petcare. Richard has been in the business for (according to his site) 23 years and he and his family run a dog and cat boarding facility out of his own house (at least this is what I understood from our communications). Carmen has only been doing this for a couple of years, but she was recommended by a colleague of M. Both people offered to provide references and basically the same services for pet minding at home. Richard charged $27/hour while Carmen charged $25/hour.

Ultimately we went with Wagatail because 1. She was recommended by someone we actually know, 2. She offered to come twice a day for 30 minutes each time, as opposed to 1 hour once a day, 3. She may be young and less experienced than Richard, but sometimes you have to give those people a chance.

Ultimately the experience was very good, and I'll break it down into the good and the bad:

{THE GOOD}
- I had asked Carmen to send us photos of the cat every few days, which she punctually did every other day, and would briefly inform us on the progress of their friendship.
- She came in twice a day, which is great because that is how often our cat is used to being fed. Otherwise she would eat an entire huge bowl of food in less than an hour.
- She fed the cat, cleaned the litter tray and played with her at every visit (at least she was supposed to!, heh)
- She picked up our mail.
- She watered the plants.
- She returned the house keys personally on the day we came back.
- She kept a diary detailing the things that went on during that day. Example 1: "Murka is very vocal, and also a friendly cat, she has quickly opened up to me." Example 2: "Today we played outside with her favorite toy and then she let me brush her and pat her for a while, she purrs all the time!" Example 3: "Murka leaves very big poops for such a small cat."

{THE BAD}
- We found a dirty toilet seat. There were some unpleasant stains on it and I don't want to think about what went on in there.

{THE REST}
- On her diary she noted that she had vacuumed the living room and kitchen on her last day, however I didn't see any evidence that she actually did. Of course we never asked her to do that, so just the mere intention of her meaning to do it was nice, I suppose.
- Nothing was missing from the house, I guess this is a normal concern to have when you decide to trust someone you never met before.
- When she came to drop off the keys Murka was excited to see her, which is a good sign that she wasn't mistreated by this person.

Overall the cat looked happy and healthy, and we would probably use her services again if we leave for any long period of time.

And a cute sleeping cat photo to end this post.

San Francisco and food (yes, again)

We're back in Sydney everyone!!! *the crowd goes wild* *roars* *applause*

In one of the recent posts about food someone commented "food? again?!", and the answer to that is yes, food, AGAIN!

Both of my parents are amazing cooks and growing up even the left overs were always tasty (except for that time my dad cooked capybara*), so food to me is not just sustenance and guilty pleasure, but equally important is what happens around the table and the people who are with you. So in short, this is my blog and I write whatever I damn well like.


We had an excellent time in San Francisco, I got to see my brother a ton, heaps of old friends and even made some new ones. We ate very well, drank homemade ales and cocktails, walked incessantly (when the weather allowed), did a little shopping, baked cupcakes with a friend and even helped create a music video for someone.

Having a full time personal photographer with me, it is difficult to bother to take photos of the travel experience. So It is no surprise that when I looked at the shots I took with my phone, they are mostly of food :-) Enjoy!

Black bean and smoked cheddar tamale with the fixings. From Donna's Tamales stand at the ferry building farmer's market. Best meal I ever had for $3.75

A perfectly cooked soft boiled egg inside a savoury cheese, ham and rosemary muffin. By Tell Tale Preserves also at the ferry building farmer's market. It was a tasty novelty, but at the hefty price of $6 I am not sure I will be trying it again.

1 Gingerbread cupcake with cream cheese buttercream from Miette. 2 Chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream from Miette. 3 beet cupcake with bood orange jelly and mascarpone cream from the ferry building farmer's market, cannot remember the stand's name :( 

Sunday brunch at the Linares-Krumme household, featuring black beans, cheddar and cottage cheeses, crepes with honey, cantaloupe, sliced avocados and tomatoes, homemade beer bread and soft boiled eggs. No joke.

* One Christmas my father decided to cook capybara, which is not commonly eaten in Venezuela however some people do, especially if they live in the regions where the animals roam. He purchased and cooked too much of this fibrous, chewy and not very tasty meat, so much that we resentfully had to eat capybara for weeks after.

Beautiful illustrations

I went into the used book shop  Book Buyers in Mountain View and while I wasn't interested in expanding my to-read list I decided to look for items that I would normally not notice.

I got a book by John James Audubon who is a famous bird illustrator. And why do I need bird illustrations??? Well I don't, nobody does. But I thought the drawings were really beautiful and natural.

Then I also found some cool music sheets for single songs, which also feature some really cool and old illustrations as the cover page. Each music sheet was $1-$5 and the paper is old and wrinkly and smelly and awesome.

I think any of these are going to make some cool wall art, craft or stationary someday. I am such a fool for pretty paper goods.

Hello. Goodbye.

I hope you had a Valentine's day so sweet that your teeth hurt.

M and I are off to San Francisco tomorrow and will be blogging from there for the next two weeks. I will leave you with the android versions of ourselves.

<3

More furniture hunting (and reverse garbage)

The never ending acquisition of old, cheap or free furniture continues.

There's a shop run by a very kind man with acute hearing deficiency on the corner of Addison and Illawarra in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville. His shop is a plain cement room and only opens on weekends but the prices are fair and the stuff speaks to me more often than not. I bought from him a bedside table ($10), a bookshelf ($30), a rug ($10) and a small ceramic bathtub (decorative, $5).

What I liked about this table is: 1. It has a drawer for stuff you want to hide AND a shelf for stuff you want to display, 2. The legs are not entirely straight all the way down which makes it more interesting, 3. The hardware is original and pretty.

Of course I wouldn't be blogging about it if I hadn't changed something :-) so I spray painted it red! It has these beautiful cracks on the top which the paint didn't quite fill and they give the table  great look!

I think it fits much better with my personality now, I'm into colorful stuff lately...

By the way, that lamp is from this insane place also in Marrickville and very near the same shop called Reverse Garbage. The price of the lamp was 3 dollars but then I had to spend another 13 replacing the lamp socket which was cracked. The original lamp shade was a plain (and dirty) white, so I followed this *amazing* tutorial on how to cover a lamp shade with fabric.

Let me tell you some more about Reverse Garbage. There is where the items that are garbage but not really garbage go to die. Things like plaster, art, furniture, boxes, glass bottles, costumes, paint, chemicals, ceramics, etc, and they are all for sale! It is a crazy place! Words cannot begin to describe it so please let me take you on a photo tour:

When you see this incredible sculpture, you have arrived at the right place.

Theatre costumes?

Wigs, shoes and piles of ridiculous clothes.

Metal drums, ceramics...

Doors...

Pink styrofoam bags!

If you are throwing an Oscars viewing party, you'll really need these, however overpriced.

Mannequins, posters, art frames.

You name it...

If you are in the Inner West or Marrickville area, do go check out these places, it'll be worth the visit!

Pros of living in Sydney #47

The most amazing cabbies.

Ok, for the most part they are a hit or a miss. But when they are a hit, oh man.

My last taxi conversation with the driver ended up in exchanging emails and him offering me a job selling his imported goods (from www.madeinchina.com and www.indiamart.com, among others, mind you) on Sydney markets. He said we'd go half and half on the profits.

Lucky me.

The new baby (and blue cheese burgers)

It is 2pm and today I have done two loads of laundry, vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathroom, applied to 8 jobs (2 of which already rejected me, that was quick!). It is currently 37 degrees outside and it comes as no surprise that the highlight of my day was the cold shower I took after lunch.

I'm taking a break now by blogging (ok, I won't lie, I'll probably take a nap after this and then pick up the job search again), because I wanted to talk to you about our new baby.

Our new Weber Baby Q120 that is!

So we got this bad boy last Saturday and took some scotch filets out for a spin in it. M won't let me get near it, not because he is mean, he is doing it unconsciously kind of like when someone doesn't let you drive their brand new car. I hope am sure I'll get to play with it when the novelty wears off...

Since I wasn't allowed to grill, I was on salad duty, something else I am equally good at. I made a heirloom tomato salad with mint, basil and feta cheese. It was light, sweet, tasty and the perfect complement to the steaks.

And the next logical step was burgers of course. These shots were taken the day after, and no we're not eating burgers for breakfast, M just happens to be wearing pijama pants in the afternoon.

By the way there is nothing wrong with burgers for breakfast.

These are blue-cheese and sundried tomato burgers, crickey they were good. There were little pockets of blue cheese oozing out from everywhere. Recipe follows:

{ingredients}

(makes 4 massive burger patties)

• 400 grams lean minced beef
• 100 grams minced lamb
• 50 grams crumbled blue cheese
• 4 sundried tomatoes, chopped
• 1 long stalk thinly sliced green onions, or 2 small stalks...
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

{directions}

Wash your hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap. Add all the ingredients in a bowl. Mix them with your hands until homogeneous and divide this big lump into 4 small lumps. Shape each small lump into a burger patty. Cook to your liking.

***

See how M has his head cocked when he is cooking? I call this the business angle because that is how I know he means business.

And the end result:

:-X

Why you should get an electric mixer if you bake

I have been using my new electric mixer from Christmas and I can see and taste the difference especially on the quality of buttercream icing.

Check out this buttercream I made using a whisk, by hand:

See how it is all grainy and sorta chunky? Well I'm guessing that the power I am putting in with my arms  must be around 40 Watts (tops), and I can only do it at full power for a few seconds at a time (go ahead laugh, but try it yourself).

Now compare it to my new 220 Watt electric mixer:

It is *perfectly smooth*. It makes for a much more pleasant experience in your mouth, texture and flavor wise since all the ingredients are blended much better and are less likely to separate should the temperature rise a bit.

These are strawberry champagne cupcakes by the way. I made a couple dozen today to bring to a BBQ tomorrow celebrating Australia Day.

The recipe is from a blog called Love & Olive Oil, which I use often because the cupcake recipes there seem to be pretty reliable, none have failed so far. A down side is that some of the recipes are lactose free or vegan  (no butter, no milk, no eggs, etc.) due to personal choices of the author. I don't mind at all, but I suppose some people would.

I used slightly over half of the sugar that the recipe called for in the icing. I often cut back on the sugar because most icing recipes will make my teeth hurt :-) You can cut the sugar and will still obtain a pretty nice texture. I always put the icing in the fridge for 10 minutes before I start piping to ensure the buttercream will be stiff enough to hold its shape.

A few notes on the final result:

• These were the most expensive cupcakes I have made to date because I had to use a whole bottle of sparkling wine (I made double the recipe). Bad idea but too late by the time I realized. The taste of champagne is sort of there but not really identifiable, so next time I will use a more normal/cheaper flavoring.

• There is a hint of strawberry in the cake itself, but not as strong as I would have liked so I will need to experiment more. 

• The cake is lovely, spongy, springy and melts in your mouth. I would not mess with the sugar content here, it's perfect.

Lastly, a shout out to my homey Parisa, who made a sweet looking hot pink raspberry cake!

I could have spend a Friday afternoon applying for jobs...

But instead I made pretty buttons for my blog! Weeeee....

See at: bongaloo.blogspot.com

Christmas 2010 (2 of 2)

So on Christmas Day we invited a few of our non-aussie aka.-no-family-commitments-friends to come over for a holiday dinner. It was our first time hosting at the new place and I really wanted to make it special and grown-up like (no more college student dinners on the floor).

We served a few canapes in the living room, a mix of cheeses, crackers, spicy nuts and olives stuffed with roasted garlic.

The cloth covering the chest in the living room, as well as the dinning table cloth and napkins, came from a couple of yards of Japanese fabric purchased from a very nice Japanese lady (the beehive gallery on 441 King St). Then I cut it myself, pinned the borders and asked the dry cleaners nearby to please sew it for me. If you own a sewing machine, this would have been an excellent and cheap DIY project, but for me it wasn't so cheap because I had to pay for the sewing.

I always keep glass jars from jam and pickles, or sometimes glass soft drinks bottles and reuse them as flower vases, which is what I did this time. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of these flowers but they look adorable when bunched up like so. Tying the cutlery and napkins with twine is such a mindless detail but I think it made a big difference in presentation.

{M making negronis for our guests with his new cocktail spoon}

The dinner menu consisted of chickpea and greens salad, grilled tomatoes with basil, root vegetables gratin dauphinoise and baked salmon with dill and white wine (no link, as M made up the recipe).

Our guests all live here in Sydney, but came from Singapore and Venezuela. We had a fantastic evening and even though we had to wash all the dishes by hand I would love to do it again in a split second! We're looking to buy a small bbq grill soon and have another small soiree for the neighbors.

Maybe a post about new years next?